I sure hope that, in the 39th and 48th districts, the gobs of fine, maddeningly comparable Democratic candidates vying to take on either Crazy Dana or the Royce Wanna-be, will come up with an agreement and method to unite enthusiastically behind the ONE most viable contender. Because, in this Dark Age of Trump, history will not forgive us, if we Democrats – what’s that they say – once again snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Levin. Please do what’s right for the Party and the nation. Soon.

I realize that the south OC / north SD 49th District just vacated by loathsome Darrell Issa has a slightly different dynamic on the Dem side, one that’s grown personally bitter over the months, and comes down to not only who has the best chance to beat the Republican(s) down there, but a more basic one of what does it mean to be a Democrat? The frontrunning Dem, Oceanside’s Colonel Doug Applegate, whom this blog supports and who ALMOST beat Darrell last year, is a Bernie Sanders-supporting progressive, while the next-Dem-in-line, Mike Levin carpetbagging down from Irvine, is the choice of the more corporatist DPOC forces – mover/shaker Frank Barbaro and the DINO running the “Liberal OC.” And apparently, for some damn reason, there are three MORE minor Dem candidates in the race.

Well, if there’s one more poll like this one, Democrats in that district will need to very soon put egos and bitterness aside and unite behind Doug. Check it out:

We can’t afford to lose this one to either an unprincipled Mexican-bashing, elderly-swindling financial crook like Diane Harkey, or even a garden-variety Republican like Rocky Chavez. As Encinitas Applegater Jim Hesson puts it today:

Doug Applegate has a nearly 3 to 1 edge over Mike Levin in the recent poll of likely voters, and the other candidates are even further behind. The Republicans have admitted that they look forward to taking on the Democrat who limps out of the primary “battle royale, black and blue and broke.”

The Democrats had a candidate who was running the closest congressional race in the nation! Closest in the nation, an enviable position that they seem bent on squandering. They have insisted on crowding the field with unknown candidates with questionable ties to corporate donors and personal wealth. Doug came within 0.5% (1,621 votes). We should have treated this situation like a godsend for this district, like someone handed a pot of gold to the Democratic Party, which hasn’t won this seat since the 1960s, yet, they are blithely tossing the gold into the trash.

Could it be that the party is more worried about having the seat go to an outspoken Marine Colonel who has adamantly sworn off corporate money than to a Republican? We don’t have the luxury of running five candidates in this race. Yes, we now have five candidates in the race! We are going to fragment the vote and play into the hands of the Republicans. There’s a real possibility if the continues that we could end up with two Republicans alone in the general! And all our efforts to flip the 49th will be flushed down the toilet.

If you haven’t done so already, it’s time to check out and support Doug Applegate, the only tested and proven breakthrough candidate who came within a hair of defeating Issa. In addition to the powerful protests and organizing against Issa, Doug Applegate represented the most formidable challenge to Issa and his near success was a major factor in his retiring.

This poll indicates that Doug remains the strongest front runner by far. Since the other candidates seem determined to fragment the vote, divide our ranks, and tax donor resources, we need now more than ever to grow his support and rally behind him as the frontrunner. Failing to unite behind the strongest candidate and losing in the primaries would be a catastrophic strategic blunder.

Before it’s too late, please share and ask your friends and family, neighbors and co-workers and others in the community to join Team Applegate and support Doug Applegate.

About Vern Nelson

Greatest pianist in Orange County, and official troubador of both Anaheim and Huntington Beach (the two ends of the Santa Ana Aquifer.) Performs regularly both solo, and with his savage-jazz quintet The Vern Nelson Problem. Reach at vernpnelson@gmail.com, or 714-235-VERN.

7 Comments

Doug Applegate ran against Issa in 2016. Not one of the other candidates running now, including the Democratic Party itself, gave Applegate any help.

Applegate only lost by 1600 votes and was a newcomer to running for Congress. If the others had helped him, perhaps some of the damage Issa has done in the last 2 years, to everyday people, might have been averted. But they were no here to be found.

Now that Issa has retired (or should I say gone to the 50th) all of these people, including Levin, Jacobs, Preajean Kerr, decide they want the seat? They didn’t help at all in 2016, but they now feel they must run. In an open primary State, this is not good for the Democrats.

Levin claims to have thought that beating Issa in 2016 was critical. And — this being Lorri’s point — he himself did nothing to help. The Democratic leadership from that cycle will say that they gave Applegate advice on how to win, but that he didn’t take it. This contention is bullshit — the deployment of DPOC resources and the calamity in the OC precincts speak for themselves. OC gave the seat back to San Diego County’s Issa.

When the DPOC’s advice is to give the DPOC money so that it can help, but it’s clear that the DPOC leadership is unable to help effectively (and perhaps doesn’t even want to help — as they have their own “better” plans for what Applegate had stunningly and unexpectedly shown was a “vulnerable” seat), then that advice is worth than useless. DPOC could and should have defeated Issa in 2016 once Applegate shows his vulnerability, and its leadership essentially chose not to bother — despite the strong urgings of some of us to go all in.

It’s true that Levin jumped unnecessarily into the race last March. Nobody around here asked him to run this time. Nobody needs him, really.

When Colonel Applegate was busting his ass running against Issa in 2016, Levin was apparently too busy with Hillary’s “I’m not Trump” campaign to notice that Applegate nearly won, and without much establishment help (or none at all). So what’s the deal?

*The rule of thumb as we recall is that if you run against an incumbent and get more than 43% of the vote……the Party backs you against any other opponent to come along the following cycle. Unless of course some wrong doing or inappropriate behavior has been discovered. Let’s just hope he soft pedals on the Firearm issues.